北京

This marked the second time I went to China without my family, and definitely my first business trip to China. Excited? Oh yeah.

In the past, it was always China Eastern Airlines or Thai Airways – but now, I went there with (a bit of) style – Malaysian Airlines. It is one of the few things “Buatan Malaysia” that I’m proud of.

The Airbus A330 is definitely comfortable, equipped with on-seat touch-screen entertainment system – you can watch TV, movies, play games and listen to music (on crappy headphones, unless you bring your own with airline adaptor).

Malaysian Airlines prepared quite a wide variety of fresh content – from what I saw – X-Men: First Class was on the list. But what I usually watch are those rare Japanese flicks you don’t usually see coming to Malaysian cinemas.

If that’s not enough, there’s a USB port for you to plug in your thumb drive – you can browse your files and listen to your own music. Next time I’m definitely packing myself an airline adaptor.

However it was rather disappointing the games didn’t work. They went all the way of preparing a special controller (read: built-in QWERTY keyboard and gamepad buttons) but the games couldn’t load. (for my case: on both flights)

To top it off, Nasi Lemak definitely pwns sandwiches.

Enough about big flying bird machines, let’s talk about Beijing.

It was autumn, from what I heard from the locals, the best time to visit Beijing as it’s neither too cold nor too hot. 20-26 centigrade daytime, 10-19 centigrade at night – awesome weather that will leave you sunburned without knowing it.

The Beijing network of roads is organized into multiple rings. Outer rings are marked with higher numbers, while inner rings are of smaller numbers, closer to the heart of the city. It’s kind of like an onion if you ask me :P

Compared to Malaysia, the major roads are definitely wider, and are generally high capacity and straight. However the traffic is rather chaotic but still ordered, a very contrasting phenomena difficult to be explained unless seen by your own eyes.

In a nutshell, I would never want to drive in Beijing.

The people whom we are working with were very welcoming, accompanying us for lunch, dinner and driving us (my superior and I) around after work hours till late night – on working days mind you. Most of them already have their own families, spending time with us would mean less time spent with their wives and kids.

To be continued…